This is how I feel about the NBA

Buncha savages in this league.

 

Just Scoreboard watch, that way no emotions attached to games.

NBA Games are really Rigged, 6 or 7 Games are needed for Money and Ratings.
Referees want to Make the Most Money even if get it in a dirty way.

NBA Chooses Teams, Certain Nike Player Adam Silver, LeBron James, Giannis,
Luka Doncic, Zion.

(WWE Vince McMahon Top Ones are
Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, Charlotte Flair, Seth Rollins).

Which Team and Player has the Best TV Ratings, Jersey Sales, Shoe Sales is a "Chosen Champion" by Adam Silver not a Earned Champion.

 

of course its fixed and rockets will always be the "challenger" even the chick at espn halftime was presenting that.

sometimes to keep interest they will let a lower tier or demographic win.
it is mainly in spite of and you get pests like the sacramento kings 2002 who end up being too good and you end up looking dumb with the fix.

i dont think most of us take it too seriously in that sense and bigger picture that 2002 kings lakers taught me whole cynical the world was ...young impressionable guy.
even before that beating knick suns magic for the titles it felt like it was against good calls. we are just "the opponent" the washington generals against the feature team. none of this new news.

to be fair houston only cares about football and rockets talk is scarce. LA has had good teams but also that fix and tons of people. fair weather out the wazoo.

the thing im concerned is how hard will they go to stop rockets? you know with kobe and the fan base support it will be tough..
rockets literally have to play lights out.

 

The New York Knicks, one of the most famous teams in the largest US city at the center of basketball fandom, has been miserable for decades. I don't buy fixes nearly as much as the next guy. I enjoy watching because when you miss 27 three and Chris Paul gets injured, the refs didn't screw us.

 

Because we get the flagrant 1 called two days after the fact on Anthony Davis ... thus, all is right in the world.

 

The Knicks are so bad it's impossible to fix things for them. They'd have to give them 15 extra games a season just to get them into the playoffs.

In any case, the NBA mainly favors long series since that yields more games (which yields more $), and somewhat secondary to that they favor stars. It is much less important to make it so team X wins. What they do is make it more difficult for teams to end series early, even if they have been dominating the other team. This is easy to do by changing the way the games are reffed mid-series, either tighter or looser. The choice of tighter or looser allows the refs to favor the losing team's play style, even if technically the rules are applied equally to both teams.

The most egregious cases of supposed "fixes" have been against teams that were leading in the series (e.g. Kings-Lakers Game 6 2002; Rockets-Mavs Games 3 and 4 2005) and in series where the teams had very different play styles.

You could argue this isn't really unfair, since they would do this to whichever team was leading. It's sort of like a homing shell in Mario Kart that wipes out whoever is in first place.

 

It’s not fixed but it’s swayed by fouls to extend series. But since it’s a 7 game series the best team always wins still

 

If I thought the NBA was fixed/rigged, I think I’d abandon it.

 

Um, yes they did. They missed calls that cost us almost 20+ points. Missing 27's is bad, but not getting calls that are CLEAR fouls is fixing

 

I wouldn't say rigged, more accurate to say that it's scripted. The players have roles to play to make the script a reality. Sometimes the script is flipped because some teams/players don't live up to their roles or some player take it upon themselves to flip the script. The NBA plays their part by assigning certain refs to high-risk games or turning a blind eye to obvious PED use. It is getting old, though.

 

What is the evidence for the last part -- that certain refs are assigned to high-risk games for script reasons, or that they ignore obvious PED use? Is it documented somewhere?

 

i have stopped watching years ago. i get my news mostly from here and will watch clips posted here and other social media groups i'm part of. it's nicer that way, not caring as much.
it is weird sometimes watching clips of other teams that someone posts and i have no idea who those brehs are.

however if i didn't grow up in htine and am just starting to follow the game, i'd imagine favoring luka and zion. they so handsome.

 

I am traveling and do not have time to dig into.

I will leave the PED accusation aside as it is a completely different issue.

Concerning the referees I did a lot of research on it a few years ago and cannot remember it all. Essentially the league office decides who is going to call what game in a series. The league office also meets with the head of the referee crew before the game. The head of the referee crew then meets with the referees that will call the game and goes over things for the referees to be on the look out for. It is a grey area but one that could easily result in manipulation.

There are also questions about why the league promotes particular referees that do not appear to have performed better than others. So the opportunity to control or influence the referees by the league office is certainly there.

There have been comments made over the years. For example Jeff VanGundy has on the record stated that he was told by someone in the league office that the higher ups in the league office instructed the referees to call more fouls against Yao Ming. There are the comments of Donaghy and and there have been others over the years.

Because the game is constantly moving with 10 players on the floor, fouls can easily be missed. So it opens up the possibility of implicit, if not explicit bias.

I am personally not comfortable with the relationship between the officials and the league office. To me it just doesn't look good and I firmly believe some players get calls that others do not.

 

See: Start of 3rd quarter.

 

Thanks. I don't doubt that there exists implicit bias -- I think this is almost unavoidable. Nor do I doubt that there are discussions on points of emphasis that occur between the league office and ref crews. Such as, for instance, looking more closely at moving screens that may have been missed in earlier games. The question is whether those points of emphasis are intended specifically to increase the chances of one team advancing or are they just intended to improving the quality of the officiating in the series. I'm interested in evidence that indicates it's really the former. There is the account from Donaghy, true, but I question his credibility on this.

 

First, I think everyone should question the credibility of Donahy. He is a crook, anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt. I will say this though, he specifically mentioned other referees doing things that were above and beyond what they were supposed to do to influence games and none of those referees, as far as I know, denied the allegations.

The league is smart. The only way we will ever know for sure is if someone like Crawford or Foster come out after retirement and say they were told to do X, Y or Z. First, I don't see that happening because the league knows the officials very well before they promote them into the position to have direct contact with the league offices on a regular basis, so there is a strong sense of loyalty and most of the officials that have those positions also have some sort of payed advisory role after retiring.

Second, the league is smart enough to know that they can influence outcomes by not directly saying "Rockets have to win" but by controlling what the emphasis is when they meet with the head of the crew and the tone and terms that they choose to use when discussing the upcoming game. Then the league only has to promote the referees that get on board.

I understand that you want a smoking gun. The problem is that in a situation like this, the very methods use make that very unlikely. I want to make it clear that I am not comparing the NBA to the mafia.... but consider the following. For many decades mafia bosses in the USA never went to jail for running their respective mob families. Prosecutors tried to get a smoking gun for 60 years and never could. Why? Because the mafia boss never directly said "kill X" or "do why". It was all understood circumstantially. It was so bad, that we actually changed the rules with RICO laws to get them.

At the end of the day, it is an individual judgment call you have to make. I have never been a big conspiracy believer. However as someone that prosecuted people for a long time, I understand human nature and how businesses and criminal organizations do things through social pressure and expectations. So, no I don't think Adam Silver or Stu Jackson tells McCutchen or Foster that the "Lakers have to win in 5".... but I do believe that the league looks at things stylistically and otherwise that they do not like, and they point those out to the referees that are then influenced by it. Look no farther than Foster and CP3. Foster was forced to call a delay of game when CP3 made a big deal out of it. The referees made sure they got Paul back by calling repeated delay of games on the Thunder over the next handful of games. When one of the players asked about it, they were told by the official "Ask Chris Paul about it". They punished Chris Paul for pointing it out.

 

Just look at how the refs allowed Klay Thompson to guard James Harden in Game 1 of last years playoffs.

And then tell me with a straight face that nothing shady was going on there.